The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music is an outstanding guide and reference source to the key topics, subjects, thinkers and debates in philosophy and music. Over fifty entries by an international team of contributors are organised into six clear sections: general issues emotion history figures kinds of music music, philosophy and related disciplines The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy, music and musicology.

You know it when you hear it, but can you say what it is? How you know? Why you either love or loathe it? What makes it original or derivative? To a music that tends to render its aficionados and detractors equally inarticulate, Theodore Gracyk brings a rare critical clarity. His book tells us once and for all what makes rock music rock. A happy marriage of aesthetic theory and the aesthetic practice that moved a generation, "Rhythm and Noise" is the only thorough-going account of rock as a distinct artistic medium rather than a species of popular culture.
What's in a name? "Rock" or "Rock 'n' Roll?" Grayck argues that rock and roll is actually a performance style, one in a number of musical styles comprising rock. What distinguishes rock, Gracyk tells us, is how it is mediated by technology: The art is in the recording. The lesson is a heady one, entailing a tour through the history of rock music from Elvis Presley's first recordings in 1954 to Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994. Gracyk takes us through key recordings, lets us hear what rock musicians and their critics have to say, shows us how other kinds of music compare, and gives us the philosophical background to make more than passing sense of the medium. His work takes up the common myths and stereotypes about rock, popular and academic, and focuses on the features of the music that electrify fans and consistently generate controversy. When Elvis came to town, did southern sheriffs say that rock was barbaric and addictive? Well so did Theodor Adorno, in his way, and Allan Bloom, in his, and Gracyk takes aim at this charge as it echoes through the era of recorded music. He looks at what rock has to do with romanticism and, even more, with commercialism. And he questions the orthodoxy of making grand distinctions between "serious" and "popular" art.
Keenly attuned to the nuances of music and of all the ways that we can think about it, this exhilarating book tunes us in, as no other has, to the complex role of rock in American culture.

For Theodore Gracyk meaning in popular music depends as much on the context of reception and performer’s intentions as on established musical and semantic practices. Songs are structures that serve as the scaffolding for meaning production, influenced by the performance decisions of the performer and their intentions. Arguing against prevailing theories of meaning that ignore the power of the performance, Gracyk champions the contextual relevance of the performer as well as novel messaging through creative repurposing of recordings. Extending the philosophical insight that meaning is a function of use, Gracyk explains how both the performance persona and the personal life of a song’s performer can contribute to (or undercut) ethical and political aspects of a performance or recording. Using Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain”, Pink Floyd, the emergence of the musical genre of post-punk and the practice of “cover” versions, Gracyk explores the multiple, sometimes contradictory, notions of authenticity applied to popular music and the conditions for meaningful communication. He places popular music within larger cultural contexts and examines how assigning a performance or recording to one music genre rather than another has implications for what it communicates. Informed by a mix of philosophy of art and philosophy of language, Gracyk's entertaining study of popular music constructs a theoretical basis for a philosophy of meaning for songs.

Opinionated and example-filled, this extremely concise and accessible book provides a survey of some fundamental and longstanding debates about the nature of music. The central arguments and ideas of historical and contemporary philosophers are presented with the goal of making them as accessible as possible to general readers who have no background in philosophy. The emphasis is on instrumental music, but examples are drawn from many cultures as well as from Western classical, jazz, folk, and popular music.

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music is an outstanding guide and reference source to the key topics, subjects, thinkers and debates in philosophy and music. Over fifty entries by an international team of contributors are organised into six clear sections: general issues emotion history figures kinds of music music, philosophy and related disciplines The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy, music and musicology.

Co-authored by three prominent philosophers of art, Jazz and the Philosophy of Art is the first book in English to be exclusively devoted to philosophical issues in jazz. It covers such diverse topics as minstrelsy, bebop, Voodoo, social and tap dancing, parades, phonography, musical forgeries, and jazz singing, as well as Goodman's allographic/autographic distinction, Adorno's critique of popular music, and what improvisation is and is not. The book is organized into three parts. Drawing on innovative strategies adopted to address challenges that arise for the project of defining art, Part I shows how historical definitions of art provide a blueprint for a historical definition of jazz. Part II extends the book's commitment to social-historical contextualism by exploring distinctive ways that jazz has shaped, and been shaped by, American culture. It uses the lens of jazz vocals to provide perspective on racial issues previously unaddressed in the work. It then examines the broader premise that jazz was a socially progressive force in American popular culture. Part III concentrates on a topic that has entered into the arguments of each of the previous chapters: what is jazz improvisation? It outlines a pluralistic framework in which distinctive performance intentions distinguish distinctive kinds of jazz improvisation. This book is a comprehensive and valuable resource for any reader interested in the intersections between jazz and philosophy.

Co-authored by three prominent philosophers of art, Jazz and the Philosophy of Art is the first book in English to be exclusively devoted to philosophical issues in jazz. It covers such diverse topics as minstrelsy, bebop, Voodoo, social and tap dancing, parades, phonography, musical forgeries, and jazz singing, as well as Goodman's allographic/autographic distinction, Adorno's critique of popular music, and what improvisation is and is not. The book is organized into three parts. Drawing on innovative strategies adopted to address challenges that arise for the project of defining art, Part I shows how historical definitions of art provide a blueprint for a historical definition of jazz. Part II extends the book's commitment to social-historical contextualism by exploring distinctive ways that jazz has shaped, and been shaped by, American culture. It uses the lens of jazz vocals to provide perspective on racial issues previously unaddressed in the work. It then examines the broader premise that jazz was a socially progressive force in American popular culture. Part III concentrates on a topic that has entered into the arguments of each of the previous chapters: what is jazz improvisation? It outlines a pluralistic framework in which distinctive performance intentions distinguish distinctive kinds of jazz improvisation. This book is a comprehensive and valuable resource for any reader interested in the intersections between jazz and philosophy.

Opinionated and example-filled, this extremely concise and accessible book provides a survey of some fundamental and longstanding debates about the nature of music. The central arguments and ideas of historical and contemporary philosophers are presented with the goal of making them as accessible as possible to general readers who have no background in philosophy. The emphasis is on instrumental music, but examples are drawn from many cultures as well as from Western classical, jazz, folk, and popular music.

For Theodore Gracyk meaning in popular music depends as much on the context of reception and performer’s intentions as on established musical and semantic practices. Songs are structures that serve as the scaffolding for meaning production, influenced by the performance decisions of the performer and their intentions. Arguing against prevailing theories of meaning that ignore the power of the performance, Gracyk champions the contextual relevance of the performer as well as novel messaging through creative repurposing of recordings. Extending the philosophical insight that meaning is a function of use, Gracyk explains how both the performance persona and the personal life of a song’s performer can contribute to (or undercut) ethical and political aspects of a performance or recording. Using Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain”, Pink Floyd, the emergence of the musical genre of post-punk and the practice of “cover” versions, Gracyk explores the multiple, sometimes contradictory, notions of authenticity applied to popular music and the conditions for meaningful communication. He places popular music within larger cultural contexts and examines how assigning a performance or recording to one music genre rather than another has implications for what it communicates. Informed by a mix of philosophy of art and philosophy of language, Gracyk's entertaining study of popular music constructs a theoretical basis for a philosophy of meaning for songs.